5 Things To Know About The NSA's Surveillance Activities

Massive government surveillance of Americans' phone and Internet activity is drawing protests from civil liberties groups, but major legal obstacles stand in the way of any full-blown court hearing on the practice. Among them: government claims that national security secrets will be revealed if the cases are allowed to proceed.

Patrick Semansky
/ AP

Originally published on October 23, 2013 1:47 pm

It's hard to keep track of all the leaks by Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor. Much of the material has been published in Britain's Guardian, as well as other publications, including The Washington Post, and have shed light on some of the agency's surveillance activities.

We wanted to step back and look at some of the frequently asked questions about the leaks:

And as NPR's Tom Gjelten noted over the weekend, "It is important to remember that no evidence has yet emerged that the NSA is 'spying' on Americans without a court order. We have learned that the NSA has the capability to read our emails and monitor our phone calls, but based on the disclosures to date, when this has happened, it has been inadvertent."

"As the [Washington] Post reports, this revelation may bolster the NSA's assertion that its controversial practice of collecting vast Internet data is used for the purpose of protecting the country," he wrote.

"In plain English, this means that many of the tools — like TLS, used by many banks and email providers — that people worldwide have come to believe protect them from snooping by criminals and governments are essentially worthless when it comes to the NSA," he wrote.

Why are people overseas angry?

There's no court that oversees the NSA's activities on foreign communications. The leaks have indicated that the agency not only spied on countries such as Iran, but also allies like France, Brazil, Mexico — and even U.N. diplomats.